I cannot be bothered watching Slot’s press conferences. I read that he brought up PSG again. WTAF?! Why?
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Watching the players during the games closely, what concerns me more than the fact that they seem a little bit confused at what their individual roles actually are in the team… is that they seem to be reluctant to step outside specific instruction that is/has been drummed into them… In short, they look as though they are being micro-managed from the side of the pitch. Obviously this can only happen if the training ground routines are quite rigid in what they are allowed/expected to do.
That philosophy might work on individuals with a low or limited skill set (Gakpo for instance), but when there are players like Flo, Szob, MO, and a couple of others, these are players that need letting off the leash to do the unexpected…
I just feel Slot has never before dealt with players of the high calibre in our squad and there has been more need to micro-manage their movements and positioning, but he has players now in the £100m plus bracket and yet rather than him raising to their standards, he is keeping them hidebound to his restrictive, safety first, slow as fuck football - Let them loose and see what happens eh - Trust them more for fucks sake
He said it might be an unpopular opinion, but in the context of (unfortunately) going out of Europe relatively early, it was also a factor in us going all the way in the league, compared to Arsenal (who lost some points after CL games, like us this season).
I totally understand people who don’t watch/listen interviews and press conferences, because you need time and willingness for a lot of the same, but I do all of them. For me, it helps me understand as best as possible what’s going on.
Don’t like to rely on anyone else’s quotes from it, either directly translated or even less as a short summary.
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Didn’t we use to shake our heads any time any manager (Klopp, Rodgers, Kenny, Hodgson, Rafa, Gerard) would make excuses like this in public, saying that this basically gives the players carte blanche to down tools when they feel tired?
Every player feels tired but your mentality can get more out of your body if you are positive.
You can only win things, from individual challenges all the way to a championship, if you BELIEVE you can win it, that’s the first step.
All I hear from Arne is excuses nowadays.
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Depends on which topic.
There are legit issues with football’s calendar, we know that.
Fact remains, it’s the same for everyone (clubs that can compete regularly and want to win) and you have to do your best in preparing a squad to be able to win both the league and CL (or at least go deep on those multiple fronts).
For obvious reasons, that might be more difficult for top English sides than sides from other leagues.
And like I said a few times this season, for us there is absolutely no way to know this as we don’t have data (not that most of us would understand it even if we had it), but it’s possible that we also didn’t do a good pre-season in terms of physical preparation.
That is possible regardless of the amount of changes in the squad, whether you had 10 players out/in or 0. Obviously it can make it more difficult if you have more than let’s say an average summer of changes, this one was a bit more (especially with the timing of some).
When he’s being asked about poor form everything he says is going to sound like an excuse, especially if you want to take it that way.
We’ve seen managers in this territory before, where there is literally nothing they can say that doesn’t have people moaning about then.
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That is not just an unpopular opinion, it is an utterly absurd comment.
We were already 10 clear at the point we went out. We had at various points accrued leads that were historically large. It took only 5 more league games after then to officially clinch the title, one of which we lost anyway. It had already months before been pitched as a historical level collapse should we not win it from the position we had created for ourselves
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The first lfc manager to lose 19 games in a calendar year and hes still here.
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Yep i was just about to post that shit… Dude needs to move on from using that PSG tie…
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Haha
After going out to PSG we got 14 points from the remaining 9 league games.
Pretty damning.
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I don’t understand what Arne is doing here. Putting aside the absurdity of the comment - we were up 15 points going into the second leg! - it sounds like he’s complaining about his squad size. But he has himself said that he prefers a smaller squad and he refuses to play four or five squad players who could give him a chance to rotate.
I feel like there’s been a bit of a turn in Arne’s attitude recently - he’s upset at his bosses for not sending him reinforcements, upset about the lack of an extension, and perhaps he feels it’s all unfair to him.
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Both games they have sat back an hit on the break … very successfully though
We have created chances but aren’t taking them, with ony Ekitike of our front 3 looking anywhere near clinical
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I was looking at some stats that showed our chance quality in the toilet. Sometimes that sort of metric can get pushed down by a high number of bad shot attempts, but the difference from the top teams was so low that it cannot be explained like that.
One of the things I see is we create openings but often don’t convert them into clear shots, the sort that moves the needle on things like xG. Things like being too slow to get a shot away, taking one extra pass or the wrong pass to the move breaks down before we can get a shot away. Its how we can go through periods of looking dangerous without creating clear MotD highlight chances
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Trying to get the PSG job someday?
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But that is the crux of what I said, we are creating chances but the last action; shot, decision to pass, not a to shoot and poor qualty of finishing/shooting is what is killing us and we just can’t keep clean sheets, which seems is down to our poor defending and tactical shape.
The problem here is if they had got results when we had most of the group together then we could have taken a hit during this period sadly we didn’t.
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He doesn’t help himself though and I’m getting tired defending him or pointing out mitigating factors.
I think when excuses pile up, even if they are rational explanations, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Better to have a ‘bring it on’ attitude to adversity.
This is a case in point. We are fucking Liverpool. The European cup/CL is what we do. We should be playing twice a week without complaining
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